Which is why this must be taught to them by others.
My little sister was on her cell phone all the time to the same people, I often wondered what the point was since she was having no new experiences to talk about.
I wonder if at least some of those were chain messages. Yes chain sms does exist, and yes it is ever more retarded than chain emails.
But if some of them are those and she sends every single one she gets to the same 15 people, that can add up to alot of text messages.
And concerning the karaoke party, I have done something similar at a rock concert, where I texted my friend because I would of had to yell to be heard.
Im not saying its not ridiculous, but it may not be quite as ridiculous as it seems.
Aren’t emails free? They come with the service on my phone. I have to pay additional for text msg.
Why not just send an email? What’s the fundamental difference?
I got up today and 7am and fired up the iPhone. I brought up the Twitter ap and saw a message sent to me from one of the large test ovens that something went wrong over night. I sent a text to the software engineer “Chamber 5 is down. WTF?” He sent me a text back. “Thanks. On it.” All of this, mind you, while I was taking my morning crap.
Those two texts took seconds. A phone call would have taken a couple of minutes or longer given the crappy cell reception my workmate has at his house. Plus it might have woken up his family.
Texting has its place. In that place it is way more efficient, comfortable and natural than voice.
The phone doesn’t buzz me when I get an email. My work, for security reasons, doesn’t allow us to get work email on phones. Texts go phone to phone so I don’t have to wait for the email server to send the message or open the email ap and wait for it to come up. Text is more efficient and timely.
:shrug:. My Storm lets me know when I get an email. My personal email is sent right to the phone. So I guess it’s a bit different phone to phone.
So if I want to send someone a text, I just use their phone number? The couple of texts I’ve had to send for setting things up where not phone numbers.
Anti-texters:
Consider that texting is simply a shorthand equivalent of this message board.
Asynchronous. Remote. Multiple simultaneous threads and conversations. One on one and multiple recipients, accurately addressed. Messages executed and read in between multiple other tasks. Anonymity where beneficial.
It’s not the exact equivalent. It has its limitations. It has its advantages. I think I understand the limitations, including (as here on the SDMB) the opportunity to squeeze into a dozen posts what could have been stated in one. Overall, though, I don’t quite get the rancor if the complainant is posting here. Surely that’s the kettle calling the pot black.
Yes. Also if I am in a place with spotty reception, I might not be able to even log in to email. The text will eventually get out or be received.
Yes. Which brings up another point. Text will work if I don’t have someone’s email. I’m more likely to have someone’s phone number than their email.
Here’s how I look at it. Message boards are for finding a nice restaurant. Email (ie an Evite) is for scheduling dinner with friends. Text messaging is for finding out where they are or letting people know you are late/on the way. Those forms of communication do not, however, take the place of actually going out to eat with your friends.
Your 4th sentence is what people are disagreeing on (or at least expressing their innate preference for text vs voice.)
Your 5th sentence with the punchline about dining together IRL being superior to texting is already agreed upon by everybody (from what I can tell in this thread.)
LOL the original text messages
Declan
Gah, Great Debates moves so fast! I’ve only been away from the board for a couple of hours!
Anyway, the other day I had a 5 minute long texting convo. Between the time it takes for each person to type their message and the time it takes for the network to send the messages, we could have done the same thing in 30 seconds on the phone.
A friend of mine showed me his daughter’s phone bill this summer: 24,000+ text messages in a month. This girl is a fucking amateur.
Sorry for not being clear. I wasn’t talking about interaction that’s 50/50 split with a lot of back-n-forth between 2 people. Many other types of interaction are 99% talker and 1% listener (such as sales presentations, voicemails, or rehashing the plot of a movie you saw last night to convince me to see it). If more people would embed all that in emails for me, I could just “Tivo” them and read the information I need in a fraction of the time.
You did say that 90% of your communication is personal instead business so we’re coming from two different worlds here.
thread is frustrating
using electronics to communicate is a minor innovation when comparing to language speech or communication themselves
I do. All of the time. My husband and I regularly communicate with each other through email/chat even when we’re sitting 5 feet from each other. Usually, we’re both listening to music with our headphones. I’m always working, and so it’s easier and more natural for me to just click over to the chat window and answer his question of talk to him about our day or our plans or whatever. My best friend lives in CA. When I visit her, or she visits me, we do 90% of our communication through chat/texting, because we don’t need or want everybody in the room to hear our conversations.
As someone who generally dislikes talking on the phone, I love texting because it allows me to send and receive small bits of information without having an unnecessarily drawn-out and awkward phone conversation.
TheKid frequently will have 14K - 18K texts per month. Texting is her primary form of communication with her friends, other than talking in the hallway. Most of her friends do not attend the same high school, though. She will send a “Good Morning” text to everyone in her phonebook (I think there’s maybe 100 people), and most reply back. There’s around 200 right there.
Do I like it? Not especially. I’ve taken to pausing during our conversations until she’s done texting. She says she can do both (listen and text) at the same time, but I find it rude. She knows my opinion and is getting better at putting the phone down. It’s also now a requirement for her to put the phone down while doing homework, unless it’s school related. Punishment in our house is phone removal. It works.
It does bother me how she manages to have relationships borne only through texting. Her last boyfriend asked her out via text. The were moopey via text. They argued via text. His friends bitched at her via text and her friends bitched at him via text. They broke up via text. I asked her if their issued would have maybe been handled better if they spoke and while she agreed, she also figured she’d be more apt to “wuss out” if they talked over the phone or f2f.
It’s too easy to turn what should be a one on one conversation into a melee with texting. Within seconds of him calling her a name, she had texted most of her friends “Do you know what he called me??” and what should have been something simple turned into chaos. Personally, if they were talking over the phone or f2f, I don’t believe he would’ve called her names. Like the internet, there’s some anonymity in texting. I know when I’m texting her, I’m talking to her, but I can’t see expressions and emotion, so I’m more apt to text her “We’ll talk at home” when I’m upset with her.
I am not anti-text. I text like a demon, but I’ve never had more than 3k/month as most of my family wouldn’t be willing to text even if you showed them. I will text TheKid during school in special situations as she will pull her phone during passing time and read it - much better than calling the school and hoping they’ll pass the message on to her. Last month her orthodontist appointment was rescheduled. I called the school at 7am to let them know I would be picking her up earlier than what was planned. That meant 1pm rather than 2pm. She never received the message from the office. I had texted her with the time change, she was able to have it confirmed with the office and she was waiting for me at 1.
Ah, so this is how it’s going to be. This is what’s going to make me a cantankerous old man. I figured I could always like new music; it wouldn’t bother me, much. I could deal with fashion; I don’t see particular styles, I just see what works. I figured I could deal with just about anything,but the future has thrown me a curveball: kids texting while talking to you. I’ll never get used to that.
GET OFF MY LAWN!!!111
from:brandi
to:tasha, tiara, shana, britney,
OMG DID U HEAR THAT LOL